Posted on 09/02/2007 8:48:44 PM PDT by monomaniac
A ten year old boy, whom I watch with an eagles eye, is reading The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden. The book is teaching him how to play poker, build a go-cart from scratch, how to fold a paper glider so that it really flies, to makes a paper water bomb and much, much more. He has found his Holy Grail. Wedged in between the books black arts are spirited short essays on heroic battles, good manners and, yes, girls. Be forewarned, gentle reader, this book is definitely not politically correct, and worse, it could turn around a boys life.
The 10-year-old I have in my sights is a busy home-schooler whose days and heart are torn between pitching in the town baseball league and his beloved violin. While a leader on the ball field and popular with his mates, I have to admit, he is sort of "out-of-it." When the talk moves from the ballgame to video games, the kid is a wash-out. When the conversations moves on to television, as it does regularly (television and movies being the lingua franca of boys from six to that ever-moving outer boundary of adolescence) , the boy is a dunce. He thinks "24" is the definition of a day. He wouldnt recognise Paris Hilton if she tried to run him over. Hes focused on learning how to step into a pitch and to do something with his violin that I dont comprehend.
He is clearly out of step with modern boydom. But how and when things changed for boys is hard for me to pin down. Somewhere not too long ago, boys went indoors. When they dont have their eyes glued to some screen, whether computer, TV, movie or even, yes, cell phone, they are shuffling along alone or in sullen groups at the mall. Building tree huts and shooting at squirrels with beebee guns lost out big time to the latest version of Xbox and the newest action-adventure fantasy at the Cinaplex.
And they look so bored! How can a 12-year-old boy be that bored unless he has been made so passive with canned pleasure that he doesnt know what else to do. He has never learned to do anything other than turn on his toys. He doesnt have the reading habit because DVDs are easier. He doesnt play outside in the neighbourhood. First, the other guys arent there. They are indoors and are stuck to their own screens. Second, he and his peers parents are convinced that if he is outside, hell be kidnapped, beaten up by bullies or meet a recruiter from the North American Man Boy Love Association.
Our modern boy doesnt get much exercise which you can tell from his rounded shoulders and the baby fat which he should have been shed years earlier. But how could he. He is driven or bussed to school for safety reasons. When he gets exercise it is part of an adult-saturated, over-organised sports world where physical contact between boys is only allowed when they are covered head-to-toe with enough protective gear to make movement barely possible. Arguments about whether a referee [yes, of course, they have to have referees] made the correct call is strictly verboten. A scuffle with another player could get him banned from the league and his anxious parents in the grandstands would be forced to live in infamy.
Other than manipulate the "on" and "off" switches, the volume controls and a few other knobs, modern boy doesnt know how to do much. He has never had to do much and the men in his life have conveniently disappeared or are too busy with their work or their own pleasures that they have never taught him to do anything. He doesnt know how to wash a car, saw wood, hammer a nail, trim a hedge, weed a garden [let alone raise a vegetable garden], bait a rat trap, or repair a punctured bike tire. Maybe with sufficient nagging, he can make his bed [sort of], take the dishes out of the dishwasher and put out the garbage, chores that in another day would have been the province of his sister.
Then there is school. In recent decades, no part of society has become more feminised, more boy-unfriendly. First of all, for young boys to sit quietly in desk seats for six or seven hours a day has long been contrary to the laws of nature. However, in the past, children walked to school in the morning, walked or run home for lunch and did the same at 3:00, only to get their ball and glove and work off the pent-up energy from the school day.
Second, there are fewer and fewer male teachers. The principalship, once the province of men, is now more and more the province of the fairer sex. Those male teachers that are left live in fear of intimacy or even putting a hand on a boys shoulder, lest they become a tort lawyers meal ticket.
Third, the academic ante has been raised in our schools. The stakes are higher and there is more and more pressure to get the children ready to compete in the global economy. That can be translated into students becoming more and more skilled at the manipulation of symbols, tasks at which our boys are not genetically endowed and, thus, are falling behind.
Most educators are scratching their heads at what is now called the "crisis of boys." On the other hand, girls are doing well. They outshine boys in all aspects of the symbol-driven world we live in. They get better grades and have higher aspirations. Girls outnumber boys in Advance Placement programs, in most math and science courses and in all extracurricular activities except sports. In 2006, girls represented 58 per cent of the student bodies at US colleges and universities.
It is little wonder that junior is in a funk. He is not living according to his nature, and while he may not know it, he can feel it. Somehow we have changed the way we live and while there appear to be many benefits, the way we are living is having disastrous effects on our boys. Given all the other crises facing the world, getting excited and making serous changes in how we raise our boys may not vault to the top of our collective priority list. But think about it. A nation without men, with only pleasure-saturated, spineless screen-watchers is a truly frightening prospect.
Kevin Ryan founded the Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character at Boston University, where he is professor emeritus. He has written and edited 20 books. He has appeared recently on CBS's "This Morning", ABC's "Good Morning America", "The OReilly Factor", CNN and the Public Broadcasting System speaking on character education. He can be reached at kryan@bu.edu .
These poor damned kids today can't have any fun.
BSA Bump!
I loved the story arc where Calvin builds a model of an F-4, and tells Hobbes that “instructions are for sissies.” Hilarity ensues.
“Just because a male is a sissy doesn’t mean he isn’t a man. That’s God’s truth. And it’s why I’m eternally optimistic with regard to boys and men.”
Even during the Revolutionary War, about 1/3 of the population didn’t give a darn as to the outcome. A sissy, is a sissy, is a sissy, whether man or woman. Just hope there are enough others with the right stuff to come through when the sh*t hits the fan, which it has already started to do for quite a few years. We really need men, that’s real men please, to put their foot down and start fighting back, and not only verbally, but by action. In particular, younger men who can make a real difference by the careers they choose, and the efforts they make politically. Sooner than later, please.
Those "boy things" are now treated as though they were symptomatic of a disease. I think that one of the worst problems is excessive (paranoid?) parental devotion to the elimination of physical risk for their boys.
These days, it's "Bobby, you must wear knee pads! Precious Bobby must not scratch his precious knee! And a helmet! Don't go outside without your helmet! Stay in the back yard and don't move! If you don't move, you won't get hurt!"
Where it used to be, "Bobby, you're a mess again. Here's some soap and band-aids, clean yourself up, you know the routine. You'd better soak those pants in cold water to get the bloodstains out. Dinner's in 15 minutes."
—tkoed
Excellent article!
One summer we threw tires on a burning fire next a dog food plant, as a prank.
The fire department was summoned (Because of the billowing black smoke.) The fire department responded, put out the fire, and got a good laugh at the prank. (We saw it from a distance, well hidden of course!)
Today the EPA would be summoned, and all hell would break loose.
This is a leftover from the "stranger danger" myths and utban legends of the late '80's /early nineties. Your boy is in no more danger of being kidnapped than being hit by lightning--possible but just barely--unless he has a noncustodial parent who can't leave it alone. In any case just teach him what we all were taught fifty years ago--don't talk to strangers. Ain't nothing new.
True. I grew up with "Boy's Life" and the Boy Scout Handbook. Taught me everything I needed to knwo about living in the woods.
Right on! On all counts.
My homeschooled Scout boys are being raised the old fashioned way too. Very little TV, no cable, no video games, no I-Pod, big yard with a park behind us.
Read what a former US President had to say in an essay on boys in the early 20th Century.
What is a Boy?
You can absolutely rely on a boy if you know what to expect.
A boy is natures answer to the false belief that there is no such thing
as perpetual motion.
The world is so full of boys that it is impossible to touch off a
firecracker, strike up a band or pitch a ball without collecting a
thousand of them.
Boys are not ornamental, they’re useful.
If it were not for boys, the newspapers would go undelivered and unread
and a hundred thousand picture shows would go bankrupt.
The boy is a natural spectator; he watches parades, fires, fights,
football games, automobiles and planes with equal fervor.
However, he will not watch a clock.
A boy is a piece of skin stretched over an appetite.
However, he eats only when hes awake.
Boys imitate their Dads in spite of all the efforts to teach them good
manners.
Boys are very durable.
A boy, if not washed too often and if not kept in kept in a cool quiet
place after each accident , will survive broken bones, hornets nests,
swimming holes and five helpings of pie.
Boys love to trade things. They’ll trade fishhooks, marbles, broken
knives and snakes for anything that is priceless or worthless.
When he grows up, he’ll trade puppy love, energy, warts, bashfulness and
a cast-iron stomach for a bay window, pride, ambition, pretense and a
bald head and will immediately say that; boys aren’t what they used to
be in the good old days.
Herbert Hoover
I taught my kids not to yell “mom” if anyone ever grabbed them, but to yell “FIRE” People look when you yell FIRE, but someone could think it was just a bad boy if he yelled for his mom.
And also if anyone ever grabbed them, to make themselves heavy and just drop toward the ground, anything to make it difficult for someone to drag them away. Ever tried to pick up a kid that was trying to stay on the ground? A 75 lb kid weighs about 235 then. haha
And to not worry about proprieties, but to go for the eyes and jam the nose, bite, anything.
Never came to that, thank God. But i made sure they were prepared to fight.
I think I’ll start a Culture War on Boys ping list
I’m a charter member. Anyone else want on??
I didn’t say finding info in a book was new... the Boy Scout Manual has been around for a very long time as well. I said it was ironic.
When he was a kid, my husband learned to build bombs from watching MacGyver.
We have that book. My boys were disappointed in a lot of it. We live in the city, so many of the things in the book we can't do. :(
BUMP for boys that grow into men!
I am the proud mom of an Eagle Scout!
and you should be proud. Eagle Scout is something that is worth accomplishing.
Good for both of you.
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